Publishing Tips for Student Blogs

Here are two recommendations that should help with your blog production.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Write your review in a text editor, then copy into Blogger.

I recommend that you always prepare your work in a text editor (not even a word processor) to ensure best results when you publish. If you copy and paste either from a product such as Microsoft Word, or from a Web browser, some of the formatting information may be carried into your post with the text you've selected.

Before copying anything into the Blogger editor, make sure that it is in plain text format, not rich text. If you use Notepad on a Windows PC, you should have no problem. 

On a Mac, you can either use TextEdit and convert your finished product to plain text (with the Make Plain Text command), or use a freeware product such as TextWrangler (http://www.textwrangler.com/products/textwrangler/).

Working offline also prevents you from losing your work in the event that your browser crashes before you're able to publish a post. Don't risk it!

2. Make sure you know whether you're in Compose or Edit HTML mode.

There are two tabs at the top of the Blogger editor. One is a WYSIWYG editor that will format your text as you enter it. The other accepts HTML (and scripting elements, such as JavaScript). 

It's fine to use whichever makes you comfortable, but be sure you know which mode you're in. The state of those tabs isn't always obvious. If you get unexpected formatting results when you try to publish, you may have been working in the wrong editing mode.